Odetta

Stuart Ramson/Associated Press

Odetta, a titan of American folk music, demonstrated time and again that her talent transcended any one style. She died Dec. 2, 2008, at 77.

Odetta was a folk icon, but her music included blues, jazz, spirituals, Appalachian songs and English folk songs.
Her 27th solo album, ''Blues Everywhere I Go'' (2000), paid homage to the great blueswomen of the ‘20s and ‘30s: Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Victoria Spivey, Sippie Wallace and Memphis Minnie.

''One of the many reasons I wanted to do the blues album is that I get pretty fed up with stereotyping of our black community as being represented by prurient sex or 'I'm gonna shoot you or I'm gonna cut you','' she said in a phone conversation from her home in New York in July 2000. ''There was blues in the '20s and '30s that dealt with society's foot stepping on our throats.''

Social protest was evident in Odetta's vast repertory. The seeds of social conscience were planted during her childhood in Los Angeles. ''They didn't have signs for black and whites, but you knew where you could and couldn't go,'' she said. ''There were no signs, but there was attitude.''

Odetta Holmes was born in 1930 in Birmingham, Ala., but grew up in Los Angeles. “A teacher told my mother that I had a voice, that maybe I should study,” she said. She later found her own voice by listening to blues, jazz, and folk music from the African-American and Anglo-American traditions. She earned a music degree from Los Angeles City College. Her training in classical music and musical theater work was “a nice exercise, but it had nothing to do with my life,” she said. “The folk songs were -- the anger.”

She left home at 18 to perform in the chorus of a national tour of ''Finian's Rainbow,'' a musical, appropriately enough, about prejudice. She settled in San Francisco where she learned to play the guitar and began performing in the folk clubs.

Her first solo album, "Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues," resonated with an audience hearing old songs made new in a voice that plunged deep and soared high. “The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta,” Bob Dylan said, referring to that record, in a 1978 interview with Playboy. He said he heard “something vital and personal. I learned all the songs on that record." The 1956 album included “Mule Skinner,” “Jack of Diamonds,” “Water Boy,” and “ ‘Buked and Scorned.” ’’

Odetta’s reputation was that of a singer of uncompromising integrity as a result of performances at the Newport Festival, at Carnegie Hall and for President John F. Kennedy on the nationally televised program, ''Dinner With the President.'' She marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma and she sang at the 1963 March on Washington. Odetta was an influence on Joan Baez and Janis Joplin and younger singer-songwriters like Tracy Chapman.

Her acting credits included Tony Richardson's ''Sanctuary'' (1960) with Yves Montand and Lee Remick. And on television she appeared with Cicely Tyson in ''The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.'' She also appeared with the Stratford Shakespeare Company in Ontario and at the Neptune Theater in Halifax.

{"type":"article","show_header_text":false,"header":"ARTICLES ABOUT ODETTA","query":"(per=\"ODETTA\") and tom!=\"Caption\" and tom!=\"Correction\" and tom!=\"List\" and tom!=\"Paid Death Notice\" and dsk!=\"Society\"","search_query":"(persons:\"ODETTA\") AND -type_of_material:\"Caption\" AND -type_of_material:\"Correction\" AND -type_of_material:\"List\" AND -type_of_material:\"Paid Death Notice\" AND -news_desk:\"Society\"","num_search_articles":"15","show_summary":true,"show_byline":true,"show_pub_date":true,"hide_thumbnails":false,"show_kicker":false,"show_title":false,"show_related_topics":true,"show_rad_links":true,"show_subtopics":true,"exclude_topics":"ODETTA","more_on_header":"MORE ON ODETTA AND:","alternate_index_subidx":"","show_thumbnails":true}

December 3, 2008, Wednesday

''She saved our lives,'' the author Toni Morrison declared, assessing the lacerating honesty and passion of Nina Simone, who died last year at 71. Ms. Morrison, who read an excerpt from her novel ''Jazz,'' was the first of many astutely chosen guests...

June 24, 2004, Thursday

WHEN Odetta, the unofficial queen of American folk music, last released a blues album 38 years ago folk purists wagged their admonishing fingers at her for betraying them. ''Blues Everywhere I Go,'' her latest blues album, proves once again that...

July 9, 2000, Sunday

NEWS Accolade The Ernest Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, a $7,500 prize for a distinguished first book of fiction, goes this year to Rosina Lippi for ''Homestead.'' Published by Delphinium Books and available next month in a Mariner/Houghton...

Anyone looking at the lineup of ''Women in Music, 1960-1999,'' which assembled eight singers in a benefit for Zero Population Growth on Monday night at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, could have predicted doses of empathy, folky guitar picking...

January 27, 1999, Wednesday

ODETTA doesn't recommend having New Year's Eve for a birthday. The deeply inspirational folk and blues singer, who will perform a cappella at the "New Year's Eve Concert for Peace" tonight at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, was born 66...